Anyone looking at the Ferrari Enzo or Porsche Carrera GT might be forgiven for wondering just where you'd exploit that kind of performance, assuming you actually had the half-million or so bucks to spare. After all, most roads are congested and the cops are dying to make your acquaintance.

Here's a good alternative. Buy a four-door sports sedan with a stick shift for about 35 large, and keep the roughly half-million in change for tires. We find these cars huge fun when nobody's looking, plus the upscale four-door styling provides enough camouflage to convince your peers that you drive as modestly as they do.

Seriously, anyone who buys a $30,000-plus sedan armed with a manual transmission these days must have sporting intentions. You surely wouldn't do it if you were planning to commute to work in urban traffic every day. Commuters generally forgo manuals, since most of the cars in this class can be had with slick automatics or CVTs, sometimes for very little, if any, additional cost.

Any number of automakers can put together a credible sports sedan, but how many can bridge the gap between all-out dynamic capability and everyday civility? For that answer we had to stage yet another rigorous comparison test.

And yes, we keep coming back to this category time and again, but this time there are new entries from Acura and Saab. And this time we were scrupulous about holding the price close to a 35-grand nucleus. No more huge spread between rival cars, we resolved. Not surprisingly, many of the makes that have appeared in earlier comparos popped up, including the perennial winner, BMW.

Keeping to the price guidelines meant fielding a 325i BMW instead of one of the more powerful models, which in turn gave its competitors a sporting chance. Of these, the new Acura TL seemed a likely nemesis. Sporting a sharp new shape with generous interior dimensions, the TL is motivated by a 270-hp VTEC V-6 hooked to a six-speed manual with a limited-slip differential. Acura has played this game before and had no intention, this time, of bringing a knife to a gunfight. On paper, the TL is a sure-fire killer. We wondered how it would fare against the established order of previous winners, such as BMW's 3-series and Audi's A4 3.0 Quattro.

Having competed gamely in past comparisons of this type with aging machinery, Saab finally has new product in the form of the 9-3 Arc. With a 210-hp turbocharged four and six-speed manual, the 9-3 Arc was priced and equipped just about right for this little seven-car soirée.

Infiniti's G35 recently tried its luck in a similar test ("Waiting for a Bimmer Beater," October 2002) and placed fourth of six cars. But that was an automatic-transmission model, which lacked the sport-tuned springs and shocks of this G35 with a six-speed manual. Including leather upholstery, a 200-watt Bose stereo, and the group's second-strongest engine-at 260 horsepower-the Infiniti offers an impressive list of attractions for just over $36,000.

Like the Infiniti, Jaguar's X-type appeared in a previous comparo ("36 on the Floor," February 2002), where it finished in fifth place among six entries. At the time, the car was priced higher, putting it in the company of bigger guns such as BMW's 330i and the Cadillac CTS. Since then, Jaguar has slashed the X-type 3.0's base price to $33,995. Equipped as it was for this test, the price increased to $36,495-second-highest sticker in the bunch but still within our price parameters. Would the lower price, we wondered, improve its chances?

Financially fairest of the group was Lexus's IS300. With a base price of $29,980 ($31,944 as tested), it was the bargain of the pack but appeared to have the necessary qualifications. A melodious inline six-cylinder hooked to a five-speed manual was exactly what we were looking for.

Six hundred miles and an awful lot of shifting later, we turned in our ballots. We think you'll be as surprised as we were.